


darling, have you forgotten me?

by shima_wishes



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe, Amnesia AU, Angst, DJWifi, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Fluff, Fox Miraculous, Friendship, Hurt, Memory Loss, Romance, Volpina!Alya, adrienette - Freeform, half reveal, ladrien, post-reveal, technically, warning: this may be Sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 07:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7705651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shima_wishes/pseuds/shima_wishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em> What happened to me? How does Ladybug know me? Why can't I remember anything? Who </em> am <em> I? </em><br/>Ladybug's eyes flash again in his mind, a beacon in the darkness, and finally he can recognise the emotion he had seen glimmering within them.<br/><em> Loss. </em><br/>It was loss.</p><p>It turns out memory lane is a more treacherous and rocky path to walk than it lets on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	darling, have you forgotten me?

**Author's Note:**

> this was an idea originally by [tayprangle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tayprangle) that she allowed me to use and i developed into what i have finally started writing today. thank you emma <3 please enjoy! (and prepare for angst ;) )

_"Stay with me!"_

A singular voice. Muffled but piercing. It strikes his mind like a bolt of lightning from afar, or possibly the crack of a gunshot from behind closed doors. It feels like being drenched with a waterfall of icy water.

His world is black, and it closes around him like silk.

_"Please... stay awake..."_

A flash of red that lacks a face. It's merely a blur, and although it's right in front of him it seems to all but flit in his peripheral vision. Adrien's mind struggles to make sense of what it can see. But struggling is exhausting, he finds, and soon enough he can feel his grasp on consciousness slipping away, fingertips just grazing the edges.

More than anything, he wants to let go. But the luminous red light holds him there like a stop light. He can sense it straining as it grips on to him using a single twine of thread. Even now, he can feel it unravelling light a sweater with a loose end, and the crimson blur is only aiding it as reams and reams fall away.

_"Don't go."_

The voice is faint now. More like the buzz of a bee's wings as it hovers a hair's breadth from his ear, or the flap of a bird's feathers as it swoops impossibly close to his face. And suddenly the voice's world is no longer his, and he's free falling, sinking like a stone in the ocean, down towards oblivion.

 

* * *

  
He wakes with a gasp, as if surfacing from the ocean with empty lungs. He feels as if he's been swimming, too; heavy, pinned to the bed as if with boulders, drenched with perspiration. His head is as heavy as his body, if not heavier, throbbing and pounding with lethal and unforgiving vengeance. For what, though, he can't even begin to imagine. Even the strange dream is fading from his mind, blurring at the edges, a shadow encroached by sunlight that's creeping ever-closer.

At a glance, Adrien seems alone in the starkly bare room. It reeks of emptiness and strong disinfectant attempting to mask itself beneath a layer of vanilla and fruit-scented perfume. It also seems musty and disused; unloved.

 _A hospital room,_ sneers his mind, planting a seed of panic in his brain. _You're in a hospital room._

The whitewashed walls are lined with shelves and there's a table by his bedside, but they carry nothing other than a small, lonely lamp, clean and white and professional. Bare as it is, the vacant room seems cavernous and isolated.

Telling a different story, however, is the shadow projected into the room by the strands of moonlight that filter in through the single window, wedged into one wall as if it were an afterthought to the room's design. He realises that it's open as a whisper of breeze lifts his hair, briefly cooling his scorching forehead. There's a figure silhouetted on his window ledge; a silhouette that dangles their feet into the cool night air, and looks back over their shoulder as Adrien shifts beneath his sheets to get a better look.

Almost immediately, after but a split second of scrutinisation, the figure flips their legs back over the windowsill to face into the room. It strikes Adrien that he has no idea how long he's been in the hospital for, and that they could have been waiting there for him for - how long? He doesn't know.

"You're awake!" She exclaims softly. A voice that he can recognise but not quite place to a face. Then, a little more tentatively, "Can I... can I come in?"

Although he doesn't know who she is, he instinctively trusts her enough to say yes, but doesn't trust the words to come out of his mouth properly. They feel lodged in his throat, unshiftable. So instead he just nods mutely, clutching at the white sheets beneath his fingers.

As she pads into the room, Adrien can see her far more clearly. She's clad near enough head-to-toe in a skin-tight, crimson red and black spotted suit, walking so quietly due to her shoes being replaced by fabric. He wonders briefly if she's cold. Other than a mask obscuring her face, her head is uncovered, revealing hair the hue of the midnight sky outside and sapphire-blue eyes that hold within them the stars. Her cheeks are dusted pink from the bite of the outside air that Adrien wishes he could feel on his skin. Her expression is that of pure relief and exhilarated... what was that? Tenderness? Love?

A single word presents itself in the forefront of his mind.

_Beautiful._

The girl perches herself on the end of his bed, delicately, as if he could smash at the slightest nudge, smoothing the covers with one hand as she studies him carefully, her mouth trying to form words but not quite managing to. Eventually, she forces herself to take a deep breath, and finally speaks. Blood is pounding so hard through Adrien's head that he can hardly hear her.

"Oh, Adrien. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

_Sorry? What for? I don't even know this girl. What has she got to be sorry for?_

He shakes his head, swallowing hard to work past the lump and respond to her unnecessary apology. "I don't understand. You don't need to be sorry."

With a frown, the girl ceases her cover-smoothing and settles her hands on her knees. "Don't be like that now, of all times. I'm the reason you ended up in here," there's a tremor in her voice as she speaks. "I should have protected you better. Who knows what could have happened to you?"

"I'm fine," he replies, confusion overwhelming his headache. He's about to explain that he doesn't know what she's talking about when she cuts in again.

"I'm - _we're_ \- lucky that you didn't get off a lot worse." she bites her lip, hard, and her eyes dart away from his face like dragonflies skimming across open water. "I thought- for a while, I thought that... y-you were... you know..."

Adrien's head is teeming with thoughts and memories screaming to be utilised, but no matter how hard he tries he can't pluck the correct ones from the concoction. All the right ingredients he needs to understand what this mysterious girl is saying to him are wallowing somewhere in the depths, impossible to reach. He remembers taking a hit, but not what hit him or why. He also remembers a dull pain, but, at the time, nothing overly severe. And that's all. As much as he tries to ignite the part of his mind that she's clearly trying to reach, the most his efforts yield is a feeble flicker of a notion before the inkling is gone again and any sparks fizz out.

He comes slowly to the realisation that the girl is talking again, but he can't let her go on this way any longer, rambling to a boy who can't make sense of her words. For a moment or two he simply watches her, taking in her presence and how it makes him feel relaxed and at ease for reasons he cannot fathom.

After a short while, she pauses in her speech to draw out a small box that she had been carrying in a tiny bag. The box is a strange shape and strikes at a chord in Adrien's memory. However, the chord is dissonant and strange, non-musical and non-sensical, and once again no fully structured thoughts arise in his mind. She looks at him expectantly, but before she can push the box towards him he carefully shakes his head.

"I'm sorry, I can't," he tells her gently, as she stares at him with wide, questioning eyes. "I can't remember what happened to me. Or why, or how. And I'm not sure why you're apologising to me. Or even... or even who you are."

The girl all but continues to stare at him, and Adrien fidgets uncomfortably in his seat. She stares for what seems like an eternity and more, like she's a figure caught in a painting rather than a girl caught in real life. When she finally re-animates it's like the motions of a wind-up toy, beginning slowly as she raises one hand to drag across her forehead and the side of her face with a long, low noise - somewhere between a groan and a sob - and then picking up speed as she slips away the box again and leaps up, hastily stumbling backwards towards the window.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, and her voice echoes around the room. "I didn't think anything like this could have happened... I didn't even consider..."

"H-hey!" Adrien cries, reaching one hand towards her as if it alone will convince her to stay. In his dipping and spinning vision caused by movement far too spontaneous, it looks pathetic and useless. "Please, wait... I want to know what happened to me."

The girl shakes her head, and her eyes glitter with tears and an emotion that he can't quite place. "I have to go," she says, her voice so quiet it's no more than a rustle of leaves in an autumn breeze.

"At least tell me your name," says Adrien hastily, hardly expecting an answer but placing his bets nonetheless.

Before replying, she laughs, but the laugh is as hollow and melancholy as the chatter of two mugs of broken china as they ring together. It's as though she's in disbelief about the entire conversation the two are having. "Ladybug. You can call me Ladybug." And then she's gone, flicking her wrist as a yoyo from around her waist zips out of the window, her body following closely behind. All that she leaves in her wake is the lingering scent of coconut and vanilla and freshly baked bread that seems all-too familiar.

Another thing she leaves behind is a bewildered Adrien, who stares with wide eyes towards the open window, blinking slowly as he tries to process the encounter. His head feels like it's being beaten against by a toddler running rampant with a drumstick too much for it to make any sense of what he just experienced.

 _What happened to me? How does Ladybug know me? Why can't I remember anything? Who_ am _I?_

Screwing up his eyes, Adrien balls his hands into fists and presses them against his eyelids until stars begin to explode in his vision. So many questions and so little intuition to go by. With a heavy sigh he sinks back into the pillows arranged in a mound behind his head, but stares blankly at the ceiling rather than closing his eyes.

Ladybug's eyes flash again in his mind, a beacon in the darkness, and finally he can recognise the emotion he had seen glimmering within them.

_Loss._

It was loss.


End file.
